The Colossus of Rhodes

The Colossus of Rhodes is both the most famous and the least well-known monument of Ancient Greece. Numbered among the Seven Wonders of the World, this bronze statue of the god Helios, thirty-four metres in height, was created by the sculptor Chares of Lindos between the years 295 and 283 BC, only to be destroyed by an earthquake in 227 BC. The legends that have spread after its collapse seem so strange and contradictory that, from an archaeological point of view, it has become a minor and almost neglected object, which specialists in Greek sculpture barely mention in their work. In The Colossus of Rhodes, the first comprehensive examination of the Colossus, Nathan Badoud mobilises a large array of sources, ranging from antiquity to the present day, proposing an intellectual excavation through the layers of the literary, artistic, and scientific tradition to discover the historical Colossus. It envisages the statue in its religious, political, and topographical contexts, exploring its function, its technique, its appearance, its meaning, and its location. Badoud reconsiders the beginnings of the Hellenistic world, marked by the emergence of Rhodes as an imperial power, embodied by the Colossus.